Companies flood U.S. government with visa requests

By Karey Wutkowski

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - U.S. companies flooded the government with visa applications for highly skilled foreign workers on Tuesday in what has become an annual lottery for just 65,000 visas.

The government did not release any figures, but experts said they expected about 200,000 applications, more than three times the number available, on the first day the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting the petitions for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

The U.S. government was overwhelmed last year with about 120,000 applications on the first day that applications were accepted for H-1B visas, leaving many candidates out of luck.

The competition is for H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to employ foreign guest workers in highly skilled jobs for three years. The visas can be extended for an additional three years.

"The people we've offered jobs to are really subject to the whims of a lottery," said Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs for Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

The USCIS closed the application window after two days and pooled the petitions, granting the visas by a computerized lottery system.

But tech companies say the demand shows the need for the industry to tap into foreign resources.

"This leaves Cisco and other U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage if we cannot access the best and the brightest workers," said Heather Dickinson, a spokeswoman for network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research).